


Hydra Won't Wait

by Popchop



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Drabble, F/M, I don't think anyone thought any of this through, M/M, everyone needs counselling, grief and poorly thought out polyamory, set during The First Avenger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-25
Updated: 2016-09-25
Packaged: 2018-08-17 08:09:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8136806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Popchop/pseuds/Popchop
Summary: Hydra won't wait for Steve to grieve. Neither can his friends.





	

Loving Steve Rogers was a complicated position to put oneself in, Peggy mused, watching him sleep. She loved the way the light touched him as he lay facing away from her, limning the edges of his limbs and the now twice-gold of his hair, and she loved the way his face smoothed out when he slept until he looked like one of the angels in the bombed-out churches he sometimes sketched in (when had that last happened? Before Russia. She hadn't seen him draw in weeks), and she loved.. him. Absolutely, unconditionally, and the thought of losing him made her breath catch in her throat. She wanted to capture this moment forever, to live in the eternal now... but there was work to be done. She pulled her clothes – last night's clothes – back on, fumbling for a second with the back of her bra where the clip had gone a little and she hadn't gotten around to replacing it, and drank him in for only a moment more before she left.   
As she left the tent, she passed Howard Stark going in for the second shift to sit with him – something they tried not to let get around, though she rather suspected that the Howling Commandoes all knew, and were pretending that they didn't. He nodded to her as she passed, and she essayed a brief smile, then caught his hand, pulling him around to the side of the tent.  
“Peggy, I didn't think you -” he started, with a wicked glint in his eye (they were a while away yet from Peggy throwing him into the Thames on VE Day because she had just had enough).   
“Put your ego down, Stark” she said, with a roll of her eyes. “I just wanted to say that he's asleep. Don't go waking him up before he needs to be”   
“I wouldn't dream of it” he said soberly, his manner turning serious all of a sudden. They had taken shifts for weeks now, and when Rogers wasn't on a mission, he was mysteriously never without one of them at his side, sleeping or waking. Peggy didn't have to ask if Howard was also sleeping with Steve – because the answer was obviously yes, the man walked like he was punch-drunk with love. “Peggy, how long can we keep doing this?” he asked, and gripped her hand too tightly. She was surprised to see how hard this affected him, the man who never let a serious word fall from his lips.   
“As long as we have to” she said fiercely, affecting the blitz spirit that was all the rage back home. “He's grieving, Howard, and he can't even acknowledge it out in the open because of what people would think -”   
“He's being selfish” Stark said abruptly. “As though no one here has lost anyone, and you know as much as I do he's acting as though he has a death wish -”   
“I know that. You think I'm not upset about Barnes?” she hissed back, forcing him to drop her hand. Upset, hell. She was grieving. She'd sometimes let herself think that maybe – after the war – they would have a little apartment all together. It would be America, of course, she didn't think they would go for Britain, and she was sure she could find a job that used her very particular skills (they had lain together in a forest with the bombing on the front oh so far off in the distance, and made pie-in-the-sky plans, and the boys had been surprised to learn that she did not, in fact, intend to stay at home and play housewife for them, and then embarrassed that they'd thought that, and then – she would blush at the thought of it, except that she was so angry with Howard). “Stark, give him some damn time to put himself back together – I'm not sure being a mess in there, with us, isn't what's keeping him from being one out there”   
“Alright, alright” Howard lifted his hands in surrender, and moved past her, towards the entrance to the tent. “But we haven't got much time. There's a war on, you know, and hydra won't wait forever”   
“I know that” she said, and turned away. She had work to do.


End file.
